Springsteen Conversion Story

To celebrate the release of the new Bruce Springsteen album, here's my conversion story: It's 1978, I'm 13 years old, walking down the street, a dicey neighborhood we lived in at the time, and some high school kids in a speeding car throw a full can of beer at my head. I get home covered in beer and blood and discover, insult to injury, that those dipshits at Columbia Record Club have screwed up my order. Instead of the Andy Gibb album I wanted, they've mailed me something called "Darkness on the Edge of Town." But then I look at the photo of the scrawny, greasy, dazed-looking guy on the album cover and I think: "Wow, that's exactly how I feel right now." Side 1, Track 1: "Badlands," and life made sense.